


The Persistence of Desire

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Series: The Tenner [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, References to Māori reo and tikanga, Science Fiction, The Tenner, time dilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24652348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: Day Three - The Long WayThis is a story of Tangaroa. Few travel to that world for it is bleak, but those that know its grey skies and limitless oceans love it. No one swims there: the oceans are inhospitable to the children of Earth who traveled there on their silver ships, their cloudpiercers.  This is a story of a boy and a girl who were born on Tangaroa and raised there, the one looking out to the sea, the other with her eyes fixed firmly on the grey clouds above.Her name was Marama, the enlightened moon.
Relationships: Lover (OMC)/Marama (OFC)
Series: The Tenner [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680610
Collections: The Tenner





	The Persistence of Desire

_When the guests found Edward Farthing again, he was ensconced in the library, dapper in his grey suit, intently studious on the pad of drawings before him. When he realised he had been observed, he blushed slightly, but held up the pad and, riffling the pages with his thumb, let his visitors see a picture of a little man trying, and failing, to climb a ladder to comedic effect._

_“The long way?” he said to the Monarch of that day. “Hmm, I might have a little something.”_

**The Persistence of Desire**

This is a story of Tangaroa. Few travel to that world for it is bleak, but those that know its grey skies and limitless oceans love it. No one swims there: the oceans are inhospitable to the children of Earth who traveled there on their silver ships, their cloudpiercers; but to a Tangaroan it is a normal profession to work out one’s days on the great rigs that mine the waters for the heavy metals dissolved in them, or as a child to comb the stony beaches for shellfish made of silver and gold.

This is a story of a boy and a girl who were born on Tangaroa and raised there, the one looking out to the sea, the other with her eyes fixed firmly on the grey clouds above, waiting for the days when they would clear and she could see a little glimpse of the sun or the stars. Her name was Marama, the enlightened moon.

As children do when they are loved and fed and sheltered, the two came of age and were happy, but then their lives altered. This young woman, Marama, studied hard, got herself an apprenticeship first in the orbital platform that circled her soggy homeworld, thence to a great star liner that plumbed the other depths, the atea between the stars.

The young man loved her, but knew that his life path was to crew the ships that sailed on the seas of water. He kissed her when she left on her first voyage, for he would not see her for many years.

One year, two years, five years passed, and then another five. The _Aoraki_ returned, and with it the woman who shone like the hidden moon. They spent the months of her long leave walking on the beach, and climbing the jagged mountains that grew above the little settlement in which they had been raised. He kissed her again on the forehead when she left, and they pressed noses that they might share their breath.

More years and more, and Marama returned again, still youthful, still vibrant, for those who sail between the stars live their lives stretched out like beams of light. Little passes for them in the years that are so momentous to us. She had tales of Old Earth this time, and a stone she had been given from the first cloud piercer Aoraki itself that she gave to the tohunga of her home. Her friend, the man who loved her, was not able to climb the mountains this time, but they walked on the beach.

And more years. This time when Marama returned she had lines in the corners of her eyes for even starfarers feel a little of the touch of time. Her friend was an old man now, who walked with a stick carved of rare wood, gifted with the patterning of a master carver. His face, too, was patterned with the story of his life, for he was considered wise by the people of his home. That year they became lovers, in his little house by the sea. When it was time for Marama to leave for the stars again they wept, but they shared their breath all the same.

And so it goes. Each time Marama returned to her home she knew that her love might have passed into the deep waters from which none return, for the waters of Tangaroa are hard on the body. But riddle me this, for I can not con it. In their love story, who went the long way around? The one who travelled far in distance, or the one who walked each day in time? Tell me that, for a charity.


End file.
